


good kat, m.A.A.d city

by Thixotropic



Category: League of Legends
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-20
Updated: 2016-06-20
Packaged: 2018-07-16 04:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7252375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thixotropic/pseuds/Thixotropic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The story of Katarina's first mission as an assassin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	good kat, m.A.A.d city

Katarina vomited on her first kill.

The target was a man, middle-aged, but aging quickly. There was a period, much earlier in his life, when he was making a name for himself as a captain in the Noxian military. When he was accused of leaking military secrets, however, he suddenly discovered he had more enemies than he had thought, and his power and influence were wrested from him. He tried, in desperation, to hire a killer to silence the one who lead the campaign to bring him down, but after it went horribly wrong, he was forced to abandon everything and go into hiding. In the year since, he had barely clung onto life, sneaking from pub to hostel, taking the cheapest room under a false identity, planning an escape from the city without alerting anybody who wanted him gone, or anybody who would sell him out to such a person. Ironically, he had taken to selling classified information to sustain himself, a crime for which he was originally framed.

The Noxian authorities usually stay uninvolved in people's petty power plays, but he had been a part of a particularly important wing of military research, so it was determined that his time had come. Katrina had been training as an assassin for a few years at that point, and her mentors had decided it was time she got used to killing. An agent had discovered the man's location at an inn in a warehouse district of Noxus, and the job was given to Katarina. It was supposed to be easy, the type of mission a trained assassin would be expected to complete seven times over in a day. She was presented the task at dusk, and accepted it immediately, taking a sharp stiletto dagger and heading off to her destination without hesitation.

* * *

Identifying the inn was trivial--There was a hanging sign in front bearing an engraving of a coiled snake, just as Kat had been told. She stepped inside onto worn wooden planks. Nobody turned to look at her, each of them attending to their drink or making quiet chatter. Only one patron, a man slouched in a well-worn cotton coat, noticed her. Katarina was gorgeous and young, rare qualities in a person at the polluted and grim warehouse district. Nobody dared to approach her, though. In Noxus, a beautiful woman in a tough neighborhood probably had a very good reason for being there, one that often carried the will and the force of the Noxian high command. Interfering with that was well known to be a death wish.

Katarina paced through the landing of the inn and up the stairs in the back of the building to the second floor where the rented rooms were. She didn't care about being detected, but her footsteps were silent as she climbed up the stairs, save for the inevitable creaking of the wood. As she neared her target, her training started to kick in, and the stealthy pacing was just just part of the routine.

However, no matter how calm she could become during sparring matches and other difficult exercises, Kat felt her heart start to beat faster from anticipation. On the way here, she couldn't help but imagine how she would complete the kill. Which artery she would sever, which path she would use to escape without detection, how she would be rewarded for a satisfactory resolution. Now, she had the feeling that she just wanted to get it over with.

She went to the second door on the right, marked with a rusty iron number nine. An small iron tool with a bend at the end made short work of the rudimentary lock on the door, which yielded with a soft click. She opened the door slightly, and let it float for a second, as she was taught. If someone was waiting for her, this created the chance for them to make a rash first move that she could easily counter. After a tense, silent moment, Katarina opened the door further, and peeked inside. The man was visibly sleeping in bed, so she gave the door a push before slipping inside and closing it behind her. The room wasn't cramped, but that was partially an illusion due to how unfurnished it was. A lonely table lay against the wall left of the entrance, with the man's few remaining possessions lying on it--A spare shirt, a cotton bag, a leather wallet, a half-empty bottle of mead. Against the wall opposite of the door, the man laid under a coarse blanket on a thin mattress.

Katarina stepped up next to the bed, and drew her dagger from its sheath. He was disheveled, sweating in his sleep, as if he were ill. Her heart was racing. She couldn't get it under control. She lifted the dagger and held it up to the sleeping man's neck, a hair away, and hesitated. She didn't feel any sense of pity, or regret. She wasn't sure if this was something everybody experienced, or just her. There was no going back at this point, not that she had any intentions of abandoning her ambitions of becoming an assassin. She cursed that nobody had ever prepared-

Her train of thought was cut short when the man woke up with a jolt, causing Katarina's dagger to pierce his throat. Katarina was startled, but held her position. Her hand locked in place. She was terrified at the possibility that he would cry out, but instead he froze up, bleeding out on himself. He raised his hands to grab at the dagger, but he only knocked it around, expanding his wound. As blood flooded into his throat, his pained attempts at breathing mutated into a visceral gargling noise. Seeing the bubbling blood, Katarina began to withdraw the dagger, not wanting to mark herself with the ichor. She had seen accidents when live weapons caused deep cuts and gashes during practice, but this was somehow different. The room suddenly felt much more humid and enclosed as Katarina felt her head go dizzy. A feeling of nausea caused her to close her eyes and stumble back slightly. A situation that was straightforward thirty seconds ago was suddenly too much for her to handle. She worried about being heard, about finishing the man off, about escaping from the situation, as well as the realization that she might be about to pass out. Her eyes stayed closed as she couldn't help but sit down on the floor and lean back against a wall, trying to save as much energy as she could to regain control of the situation. She wanted to block out everything and calm down, but the sound of blood now dripping onto the floor and the continued desperate gasping coming from the paralyzed and slowly dying man kept pulling her back to the reality of the horribly blotched job she was performing.

She tried to suppress her stomach, even rubbing it to comfort herself, but her will was not nearly strong enough. Disappointment, disgrace, disgust. She threw both hands on the floor to her left, and vomited. Her dinner had been light, and she had lots of water to stay hydrated through her mission, so it didn't burn her throat as much as it could have. She spat out the remnants of her sickness, wishing that at least with that out of the way, she could get herself up. The fear of someone discovering her was too much of a motivator. It's not that she was worried about there being a witness, after all, she could just take them out--could she? She wasn't even sure of herself anymore. But it was more a fear of humiliation. Of letting someone, anyone, the world, seeing who she was in this moment. To be forever marked with a reputation, to be associated with this scene which was just so unbecoming of her. She thought of all this as she pulled herself onto the bed, closing her eyes so as to not look at the mess of a corpse she had made. Her knee dug into a soft stomach which deflated naturally as she threw open the windows of the room. The cool, fresh air gave her a little bit of relief, the breeze catching on her face which was now damp with sweat. She brought her legs up the side of the bed and under her, inadvertently digging her boot heels into her bedmate as she stepped before letting them dangle out the window for just a moment before pushing herself forward to fall down onto the street. She landed on her feet, quite delicately, actually. Not bad, she thought to herself, considering she was just hoping that she wouldn't break anything as she fell.

Not bad at all. A smug, albeit weak smirk appeared on her face. At least she could do something right. Next time. Next time would be perfect.


End file.
